Chapter 22 The Temple(1/2)
Xu Qing is no stranger to the dark night in the restricted area.
Whether it's the ruins of the city or this jungle.
He lived in the former for more than ten days, and in the latter he also experienced several nights.
At this moment, he was hiding in the gap between a giant tree, half-squinting his eyes, and silently breathing in the rich and heterogeneous spiritual energy mixed in the forbidden area while he was pretending to sleep.
After these spiritual energies enter the body, they are separated by Haishan Jue. The pure part nourishes the whole body, while the heterogeneous part blends into the shadow.
Xu Qing has become accustomed to this change.
He even had a vague feeling that practicing in this restricted area may be due to the shadow, or it may be because this place is dangerous and he is strongly vigilant anytime and anywhere.
With a high degree of mental concentration, the speed of cultivation also increases a lot.
Now we are not far from the fourth level of Haishan Jue.
"It's like sharpening a knife..." Xu Qing murmured.
He didn't understand any big principles, but he remembered that the blacksmith in the slums once told people that a good knife needs a better sharpening stone to fully reveal its edge.
At this moment, the dangerous restricted area seems to have become Xu Qing's whetstone.
In this grueling practice, Xu Qing opened his eyes silently after completing a week for a long time.
He raised his head and stared at the darkness of the outside night along the cracks in the trees. At night in the restricted area, the roars of strange beasts rose and fell in the distance, echoing in the jungle like the low voices of gods and demons.
The coldness was everywhere, invading all living things here, and also penetrated into the cracks in the trees where Xu Qing was hiding, permeating his body.
Very cold.
This scene made him feel as if he had returned to the ruined city, and a sense of loneliness gradually filled his body.
But Xu Qing was already very familiar with loneliness. After a while, he closed his eyes again and continued practicing.
Just like that, time passes.
Because he found the right resting place, the night was relatively safe. However, in the middle of the night, Xu Qing, who was practicing, heard the sound of footsteps from the outside world.
It was very chaotic, as if many people were walking together.
Xu Qing's expression was slightly condensed, his eyes narrowed, and he looked to the outside world, but it was pitch black outside the gap between the trees and there was nothing.
But Xu Qing's heart sank suddenly, because at the moment when the footsteps were heard, the roars of the strange beasts in the nearby jungle disappeared instantly, which made Xu Qing's vigilance suddenly increase.
He remembered the singing and footsteps he encountered last time, but the feeling it gave him now was a little different.
"It's not like the footsteps of the singing that day, and there is no singing."
Xu Qing quickly analyzed and did not act rashly. Instead, he forced himself to calm down, held his breath, and stared at the dark night outside.
Gradually, the footsteps became clearer and clearer, and it seemed that a group of people were lining up and getting closer.
At the same time, bursts of cold that went beyond the realm of coldness, as if it could freeze the body, also violently invaded at this moment.
This kind of cold was no stranger to Xu Qing. Whether it was the singing that day or the strange beings that appeared in the ruins of the city at night, they all exuded this kind of temperature.
But the degree was different. The singing that day could freeze his soul, but the cold now only made him physically uncomfortable, not to the point of losing his ability to move.
"It's the kind of weird existence that resembles ruins!" After Xu Qing made a judgment, he held on to the iron sign tightly, took a deep breath, restrained his inner fluctuations, and forced his eyes to close, not to open them.
Don't look at it, don't touch it, don't encounter it.
After Xu Qing closed his eyes, the footsteps suddenly rushed and got closer and closer, as if countless people were circling around the big tree where he was.
Xu Qing's heart was shaken, and she tried hard to restrain her urge to open her eyes and see what the other person looked like.
Until a long time... when the sun rose in the sky, the chaotic footsteps finally stopped lingering and slowly faded away.
Its daybreak.
Xu Qing did not open his eyes immediately. He waited for a moment, then slowly opened and closed his eyes, and saw the gap in the tree where he was. There was a thick layer of ice there, and his whole person was
Encased in ice.
Through the ice, the sun shone on Xu Qing. He exhaled, pressed his left hand on the ice, and pushed hard. The ice cracked with a clicking sound and fell to the ground.
Xu Qing slowly got out, and first looked around. He saw that in the jungle, all the wolf corpses that were there yesterday had disappeared, and there were... a lot of footprints on the ground.
They are human footprints.
It was so densely packed that it looked like hundreds of people were passing by.
Xu Qing had never heard of hundreds of people entering the restricted area together.
Especially...these footprints are really footprints, not shoe prints.
Xu Qing was silent and looked away for a long time. He felt more deeply about the strangeness of the restricted area. At this moment, when it was dawn and the danger of the restricted area was less than at night, Xu Qing did not give up exploring and left in a flash.
A few hours later, Xu Qing finally reached the farthest point where his group went last time, the small canyon where the Thunder Team picked seven-leaf clovers.
The interior of the canyon was the same as when they left. The sun shone on the ground along the top of the canopy of vines above, and the fragrance of flowers filled the air. It was isolated from the dangers of the outside world, and it seemed like a paradise.
Arriving here, Xu Qing breathed a sigh of relief and looked up at the other end of the canyon, the group of temples that existed further away.
After staring for a moment, Xu Qing withdrew his gaze, took a brief rest, and then galloped straight towards the temple complex.
The jungle outside the canyon is more lush, and there is less and less sunlight here.
I wonder if this ancient temple complex still exudes the splendor and majesty of their era, so there is little danger when approaching the canyon.
The lush jungle seems to have a much milder atmosphere.
Even the jungle closest to the temple complex was not much different from the trees Xu Qing saw in the outside world. They were no longer ferocious and dark.
There were also some horse chestnuts here, which were picked by Xu Qing.
Xu Qing was a little surprised by everything here, but his vigilance did not diminish and he approached cautiously.
Until another hour passed, and as dusk was approaching, he walked out of the jungle and came to the front of the temple complex.
There are very few trees here, and the sunlight falls over a wide area, making Xu Qing's eyes a little dazed.
What caught his eye was a huge domed building with a height of dozens of feet.
Even though it collapsed, even if it was dilapidated, even if it was covered with moss, the temple, which was made up of neat stones that were much larger than his body, was filled with a sense of vastness.
Walking inside, stepping on the broken giant bricks on the ground, it felt like Xu Qing had entered a country of giants.
There are ruins everywhere, each exuding the meaning of ancient times, as if they are telling Xu Qing their experiences.
Further ahead, there is a collapsed statue.
The lower body of this statue is gone, reduced to countless fragments that are difficult to piece together. The head is still complete, but its appearance is blurry.
Even so, it is more than thirty feet tall. It is conceivable that it was at least two hundred feet tall before it collapsed.
Standing in front of it, Xu Qing's presence is very inconspicuous.
At this moment, the wind is blowing, like the sound of the Qiang flute, the desolate whirling, and it is like cutting off time and space, leaving only the gaze of future generations to see the glory of the past.
Xu Qing looked at the statue quietly and was silent for a long time.
He thought of the ruins of the city outside the slums. He wondered whether in a few years, people of that era would be like him now, carefully entering restricted areas and looking at that city as if they were looking at history.
After a while, Xu Qing withdrew his gaze and searched among the temples, but could not find the special stone that Lei Dui had mentioned.
When he arrived at his residence, he had already inquired about this special stone that would emit colorful light.
It seems to grow naturally, and the time of appearance is irregular.
After the search failed, Xu Qing felt a little regretful. His body jumped up and down a few times to the top of a temple, where he stood looking in all directions.
Behind you is the outer area of the forbidden jungle. Although you can't see the end, you can still see part of it. Calculating the time, today is the fourth day as mentioned by the bone knife who bought insurance here.
Yesterday Xu Qing was in the jungle and saw no fog, and there was still no fog today, so he did not need to rescue.
So he turned around and looked at another direction of the temple complex, which... was the depths of the restricted jungle.
After pondering for a while, Xu Qing raised his head and noticed that it was getting late. He planned to explore the depths in a small area and rush back before dark. He would rest here tonight and return early tomorrow morning.
After making a plan, Xu Qing immediately moved his body, jumped off the temple and headed towards the depths.
The moment he stepped into the depths of the jungle, his nerves became intensely tense, and he became even more vigilant and cautious.
Because he knows that the degree of danger here is much greater than that in the outer areas.
In fact, this was indeed the case. Only half an hour later, Xu Qing's figure reappeared within the temple.
His face was gloomy, and there was lingering fear in his eyes.
But the leather bag bulged, as if it was already full.
He had only walked less than a mile before, and he saw a lot of aged seven-leaf clovers, which seemed to have not been picked for a long time. This surprised Xu Qing, because this kind of aged seven-leaf clovers are very valuable.
But when he was picking, he clearly felt that the intensity of the heterogeneity had doubled. If his shadow hadn't been able to absorb it, it would have been difficult for anyone else.
And he also saw the strange jellyfish he saw last time in the forbidden area from a distance...
There are more than a dozen of these jellyfish here, but they are much smaller, but their cold aura is still very obvious.
Fortunately, most of these jellyfish were hanging and sleeping on the trees. After Xu Qing saw them, he carefully avoided them.
But as he moved forward, he had a strong feeling that in the depths of the jungle, there were countless eyes, as if they were real, with greedy intentions, falling on him from unknown directions. New
To be continued...